


If the world was wide enough

by cuneifire



Series: birdcage, gleaming in the nightlight [1]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: 19th Century, AU, Alternate History, American Revolution, Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-14 17:18:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14773856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuneifire/pseuds/cuneifire
Summary: “Don’t you think it’s best to let caged birds free?”“But then I could never see them.”“…And besides, the cages look so pretty.”





	If the world was wide enough

**Author's Note:**

> history is great but you know what's better? history that didn't happen.  
> Also, time is 1803 but it isn't really that relevant.

****America is in the mirror.

Well, not really, he knows he’s not actually _in_ the mirror, that’s not possible, but still, he looks like he’s in the mirror. It’s not real, but it’s imaginable.

                The room’s cold. And lonely. And filled with shattered glass, because he stumbled in and crashed into a whole bunch of them a few hours ago.

But not this mirror. This mirror he missed.

                The room’s dark, nothing more than a decorated cellar, and the door locks from the outside.

He rattles the handle. As expected, it doesn’t open. He holds back a sigh.

                Gritting his teeth, raises his hand to his shoulder to touch the bruises. And winces, even though his fingers barely graze likely purple skin.

The mirror is dark with his reflection, engraved with elegant carvings that cover every square inch of the frame. The metal rusts, the mirror is stained.

                He steps forwards, ignoring the way his fingers graze on cutting glass and his foot nearly slips over slick cold concrete and lets him fall on sharp objects again.

His reflection is dirty, his hair stained in places he knows (hopes) it isn’t, covered in a dark brown rust.

                He raises a fingernail to the mirror, scratching the rust away easily.

His reflection stares him down.

                He looks away, going back to picking up pieces of glass and tidying them up, thinking back to what England had been telling him before shoving him in here.

_“You are nothing.” He’d hissed, lips curling over his teeth like a feral animal. Because America had been talking about the dissent in Boston over the newly imposed taxation law of 1803, and England had already been annoyed about some short guy in Europe or something misbalancing everything, so his teeth had been gritted and then he’d just turned around and stood up and started yelling._

_“I don’t even know why you still exist!” He’d said, face twisted in an ugly, way, eyebrows drawn together in a furrow that America knew making fun of would not be smart._

_“You’re incompetent, you can’t manage business for shit-“ Maybe that was right, but America could tell England everything about upcoming technology, could recite stats and new science studies like England could military tactics, could-_

_“-I could be useful, if you just let me-“_

_England glared at him, and America had swallowed, going silent._

_“You serve no purpose.” He’d said, biting the words out like a curse, and it’s felt like one._

_And, for the first time in over twenty years, America had hit England._

_It’d just been a punch, barely hitting and weaker and nothing like his punches at England has once been, but he’d still done it._

_His punch had hit, but England had hit back harder, so much harder, so hard he stumbled through the doorway and crashed into the mirror and heard the click of the lock behind him and shouted at the door for England to let him out until his voice went raw._

_“England, wait-“ He’d said, just seconds afterwards, blinking hard, throat constricting painfully. “There’s something I need to tell you.” He’d confessed to empty space._

_He got no response._

His skin slices on sharp glass, and he sighs, watching delicate red drip over the clear shard.

                All he’d wanted was… England to _see_ him, for once. As something other than a formerly misbehaving colony. As something more than a subservient. Maybe as a friend, or maybe just as a person. Nation. Whatever.

But, he thought as he kicked a few shattered frames to the side, England didn’t want that.

                He remembered a conversation he’d had with England once, during his revolution, back when he still had a chance.

_“Why can’t you let me go?” he’d asked, once, over a table in the back of a dirty bar where they had met up, simply to see if there was any way to negotiate without killing too many men._

_There had been none. “It is as simple as the fact that the world is not able to hold both of us, America. Should you rise, I will fall.” England had said, expression grim with something America couldn’t decipher._

_America had considered that._

_“Bullshit.” He’d proclaimed. England had sneered, and they’d never truly talked again._

He finishes cleaning up, wondering if there’s anything to wrap his cut finger with. There isn’t. So instead he simply sits down on the very cold basement floor, parallel to the mirror, and stares at his reflection.

“ _I own you.”_ England had said, as words to end the war.

 _“I still own you.”_ He’d said, with breathless relief.

                Then, America had felt like a bird in a cage, heart pounding against ribs with sorrow.

Now, he stared. The man in the mirror looked empty.

                He didn’t feel any different.

He didn’t matter to England, he knew. What mattered was England still had control, control over America, over the world, over everything.

                His reflection blinks. Its eyes are watery.

He wishes the room had light other than a barred window, but England didn’t build cages like that. No one builds cages like that, with something more than the simple illusion of freedom.

America’s heart hurts, from glass, from stone, from fists, from staring up at the ceiling at night and wondering what might have been, from every look that England gave him that made his heart constrict in a way that was somehow painful and everything he ever counted on at the same time.

What he counted on, not what he wanted.

He wanted to walk the streets free of scars. He would never have that. England had ensured it.

                He wanted his freedom. He had given England that.

He wanted to be able to open his eyes every morning and not drown in regret. England, too, had that, cradled in the palm of his gun-worn hands like a bird about to be crushed.

                He wanted to kiss England too, although he wasn’t sure why.

But he had already given England everything. He could not give him that.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a second part for this thing but it's kind of shit so it might be a while before I post it. There might be something after that but idk if it'll happen because I have about ten damned Hetalia projects at the moment and this was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing that I ended up really liking.  
> K. Enough author stuff. Hope you guys liked!


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